Seize Control of Your Sites With Siege

June 29, 2011

By
Joe Brockmeier

Getting ready to launch a site, but want to test it out before it goes live? Consider Siege, a Linux server management utility that exposes problems before the site is in production. ServerWatch takes a look at this solid and easy to use load-testing tool.

Getting ready to roll out a site, but not sure how it will perform in real-world use? Take a look at Siege, a load-testing and benchmarking utility that will help stress test your setup before exposing it to the world.

Siege is a fantastic utility for helping with Linux server management by exposing problems before they go into production. It's open source software (GPLv2 or later) and easy to get started with.

Siege is packaged for Debian and Ubuntu, but doesn't look to be packaged for Fedora and openSUSE (at least in the default repots). Do remember, though, it's "i" before "e"--I nearly missed the package for Ubuntu by searching for "seige," which (obviously) doesn't exist.

The source, of course, is available. Note that the link to the latest version from the homepage returns an "unable to connect" error (at least as of this writing). However, the pub directory is available over HTTP even if the FTP server seems to be down.

Once installed, Siege is very easy to use. You can use Siege to test over HTTP and HTTPS -- it has no support for FTP or other protocols at the moment.